Liberalism is broken and Canada proves it
by Michael Cook, Mercator:
Liberalism is broken. This is a big kick-sand-in-my-face claim. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Canada’s embrace of euthanasia supplies that evidence.
Let’s unpack this.
First, what is “liberalism”? Its meaning shifts depending on whether one is speaking of economics or politics or ethics. Edmund Fawcett’s excellent Liberalism: The Life of an Idea, surveys scores of varieties of liberalism over the past 200 years.
In a recent widely-read essay in The Atlantic, however, New York Times columnist David Brooks identified its core idea as autonomy. This is the notion that the ultimate goal of politics, economics and ethics is to permit individuals to achieve their self-chosen goals. As Brooks puts it: “The state has no right to impinge on a citizen’s individual freedom of choice, provided that the person isn’t harming anyone else.”
The English philosopher who wrote the classic explanation of autonomy is John Stuart Mill in his influential 1859 tract On Liberty. Mill is to liberalism what Marx is to Communism or Thomas Aquinas to Catholicism – a patron saint whose words are used as epigraphs and memes and emblazoned on T-shirts.
Brooks is a thoughtful, moderate, eloquent American liberal and Mill has a special place in his heart. He paints an aureole of noble humanitarianism around Mill and his wife Harriet and his essay even begins with a sentimental tribute to Mill’s love for his wife Harriet. Together they produced On Liberty, which is, according to Brooks, “one of the founding documents of our liberal world order”.
The liberalism that the Mills championed is what we enjoy today as we walk down the street and greet a great variety of social types. It’s what we enjoy when we get on the internet and throw ourselves into the messy clash of ideas. It is this liberalism that we defend when we back the Ukrainians in their fight against Russian tyranny, when we stand up to authoritarians on the right and the left, to those who would impose speech codes, ban books, and subvert elections.
(More about his crush on Mill below.)
But Brooks is dismayed to see that the good ship Liberalism is breaking up on the reef of Canadian euthanasia.
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